Finding Hope, Even With Advanced Lung Cancer

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My mother is 58 years old and was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. It is in her lymph nodes, and it had spread to the brain. She had one tumor removed from the brain, and the other was too close to the brain stem to remove. She is undergoing radiation right now, a total of 15 treatments. She will start chemotherapy when radiation is complete. The doctor is talking about using carboplatin and Taxol (paclitaxel). What other treatments are out there, and what is the chance of stage IV lung cancer going into remission? Is that even possible?

I’m sorry to hear about your mother's struggle with lung cancer. What your mother is going through is the standard of care for the type and extent of lung cancer she has. In other words, it is the appropriate treatment, and any other new treatments would have to be proven to be at least as effective, and/or safer, in order to be considered as alternatives. Other treatments that are currently available are either inappropriate for patients whose cancer has spread to the brain, or would only be used if the current treatments were not well-tolerated, or ineffective.

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that your mother and her doctors can achieve a remission from stage IV lung cancer. The goal at this stage is to prevent symptoms and reduce those that are present while preserving her quality of life. In doing so, a very small percentage of patients will find that their disease remains under control for long periods of time. Every oncologist I know can relate a story about such a patient, so there is reason for hope. However, one reason my colleagues in oncology recall such patients so vividly is that this is the exception to their experience, and not the rule.

Last Updated: 5/21/2007

Lung cancer expert Dr. Doug Arenberg is a specialist in pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

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